FACE AND POLITENESS

12th July 2016

The guest speaker for the July meeting was Dr Yasuhisa Watanabe from the Asia Institute, Faculty of Arts at Melbourne University. Dr Watanabe is a lecturer in Japanese language and culture with a special interest in cross cultural communication in the context of business in Japan. His presentation was titled, 'Face and  Politeness, how complaints can be expressed', which he illustrated with an example of dealing with noise coming from a neighbour's house.

Dr Watanabe and Chieko Yazaki, President of Ikebana International Melbourne.

The demonstration was given by Emily Karanikolopoulos, who stepped in at short notice to demonstrate 'An arrangement to be seen form all around'.

Emily pointed out the importance in this arrangement, of each angle having its own focus and a different appearance.

Below are other arrangements prepared by some of the members present at the meeting.

     

           

               

      

          

         

JAPANESE DAY

14th June 2016

The theme of this month's meeting was Japanese Day. Our guest presenter and workshop leader was Mrs Yuko Jensen. A teacher and practitioner of Chado Urasenke Tankokai (Japanese Way of Tea). Tea was not the focus of the workshop, but the making of Japanese sweets that are served with tea. The sweets are made from a variety of ingredients including sugar, white and red beans, vegetables and/or fruit for flavouring.

Mrs Jensen gave a brief history of the evolution of the tea ceremony and the accompanying sweets, then proceeded to demonstrate her considerable skills.

Above are some examples of her creations.

Including a variegated camellia.

Chapter members were given the opportunity to make these dainty hand-made sweets and did so with great enthusiasm.

The members then shared a light luncheon of 'finger food' and admired the ikebana that had been made before the meeting started.

Nicole McDonald

Toula Karanikolopoulos

Sally Wilkinson

Lara Telford

Lee Johnstone

Helen Novic

Marcia Lamrock

Betty Karanikolopoulos

Patricia Hetrel

AUTUMN IN A BASKET

The theme of the workshop at the Chapter meeting on 10th of May was 'Autumn in a Basket'. Thea Sartori lead the workshop demonstrating with an arrangement in a beautiful basket that had been given to her some years ago by another Chapter member, Aiko Nakada, of the Ohara school. 

Above is Thea's completed arrangement.

Thea, like most members present on the day used materials gathered from her own garden. A number of the members spoke of the difficulty they had faced because the city had been hit by ferocious wind storms on the previous day and many cherished autumn branches and flowers were damaged or completely blown away.

However, as you would expect the enthusiastic members rose to the challenge and the 18 beautiful autumn arrangements below were created